HP promises PalmOS smartphones

The Gadget Show  Thursday 07 October 2010

The Palm Pre - PalmOS at its best

Thought you’d heard the last of PalmOS when the legendary PDA maker was swallowed up by HP earlier this year? Think again.

That’s right – the mobile operating system acquired by HP when it paid $1.2bn to buy out Palm is all set to make a surprise comeback inside HP hardware in 2011.

“You will see us coming early next year with new phones,” HP senior vice president Eric Cador promised recently, despite the company insisting for months it wasn’t planning on using the Palm acquisition as a springboard into the mobile phone market.

Despite a long history as a pioneer in handheld devices, Palm was largely caught out by the smartphone revolution, only to stun the technology world seemingly out of nowhere in early 2009 with the Palm Pre – a touchscreen contender rated by many as every bit as good as the iPhone.

PalmOS was rightly given much of the credit for the Pre’s success, but it wasn’t enough to save Palm itself. After long delays in getting the Pre to market, and little obvious plan to build significantly on the Pre’s foundations, the writing was on the wall long before HP stepped in.

Despite openly confirming that PalmOS was a major attraction of any deal to acquire Palm, HP has kept any plans it had for the mobile OS very much a secret – until now.